First off, this idea is not based on experience, I'm mostly speculating.
The consortium has 5 cloaked heroes. This gives them the ability to attack any planet straight on the ground with 5 heroes (and an unlimited number of defilers...). If we use common sense and say that 5 heroes will defeat 5 normal ground units, this means that a player can waste the whole pop cap a planet gives (5) on protecting that planet, since he can be attacked anywhere anytime. Additionally, the ZC even has acces to Orbital Bombardement (!) when attacking a planet with a cloaked Tyber, since the Merciless gives that advantage even without winning the space battle.
Silri's pet makes any tower defence obsolete.
Also, the fact that the Merciless is cloaked allows e.g. the following scenario:
A rebel or Empire player leaves a space station level 1 or 2 or a small fleet undefended. The ZC player spends a minimal amount of credits to bribe e.g. 2 starviper squads to that system (to start a space battle) and proceeds to own the enemy fleet with a cap ship hero.
IMO this is not really what one would call balanced...
My suggestion would be to make Silri, Tyber and possibly Urai Fen normal,i.e. non-cloaked hereos:
Tyber to prevent the "cloaked cap ship owns enemy fleet" scenario as well as the "raid with orbital bombardent" phenomen.
Silri, because her rancor is just a too powerful unit to be deployable anywhere and owns any tower defence, which could be used to fend off other "hero raids"
Urai Fen simply because he too is extremly powerful with cloaking and regenaritive abilities and is extremly hard to fend off for an unprepared Force since he can just hide and regenarate.
I know that the Rebel raid can be quite powerful too, however this is one of the Rebels' main advantages that the ZC should perhaps not get in an enhanced form...

First off, this idea is not based on experience, I'm mostly speculating.
The consortium has 5 cloaked heroes. This gives them the ability to attack any planet straight on the ground with 5 heroes (and an unlimited number of defilers...). If we use common sense and say that 5 heroes will defeat 5 normal ground units, this means that a player can waste the whole pop cap a planet gives (5) on protecting that planet, since he can be attacked anywhere anytime. Additionally, the ZC even has acces to Orbital Bombardement (!) when attacking a planet with a cloaked Tyber, since the Merciless gives that advantage even without winning the space battle.
Silri's pet makes any tower defence obsolete.
Also, the fact that the Merciless is cloaked allows e.g. the following scenario:
A rebel or Empire player leaves a space station level 1 or 2 or a small fleet undefended. The ZC player spends a minimal amount of credits to bribe e.g. 2 starviper squads to that system (to start a space battle) and proceeds to own the enemy fleet with a cap ship hero.
IMO this is not really what one would call balanced...
My suggestion would be to make Silri, Tyber and possibly Urai Fen normal,i.e. non-cloaked hereos:
Tyber to prevent the "cloaked cap ship owns enemy fleet" scenario as well as the "raid with orbital bombardent" phenomen.
Silri, because her rancor is just a too powerful unit to be deployable anywhere and owns any tower defence, which could be used to fend off other "hero raids"
Urai Fen simply because he too is extremly powerful with cloaking and regenaritive abilities and is extremly hard to fend off for an unprepared Force since he can just hide and regenarate.
I know that the Rebel raid can be quite powerful too, however this is one of the Rebels' main advantages that the ZC should perhaps not get in an enhanced form...

Your opinions?

The ZC heroes are cloaked because they have to buy black market stuff all over the place. If they cannot do that then the one or two heroes can't fight, buy, do mission specifics stuff to unlock the other types of corruption etc... Naw, I think the GC has the right balance it needs in view of the fact that the ZC is a very unconventional army specializing in guerrilla tactics and corruption.

Petro did alot of thinking about this I'm sure and I like what they came up with as it mimmicks some of the RL problems with dealing with ppl willing to do anything to serve their cause.

Some pretty interesting and valid points raised YertyL. I am miffed by the 'magical orbital bombardment' and the cap ship hero tactic. I know there is a big difference between AI and human players however the ZC heroes are not overly powerful when controlled by AI, except for Fenn. I attacked (which I agree is different from BEING attacked by ZC heroes) a planet with every ZC hero on it, plus a couple of defilers, and granted my inital pop cap was 10(!) I wasted the heroes with less losses than expected. Granted if I had a regular pop cap of say 3-4 I would probably have been in trouble. But I do agree Fenn is incredible. He basically nullifies a hero. He has killed both Vader and Fett on seperate occassions in my games without breaking a sweat. Vader has become a punching bag it seems.

The ZC heroes are cloaked because they have to buy black market stuff all over the place. If they cannot do that then the one or two heroes can't fight, buy, do mission specifics stuff to unlock the other types of corruption etc... Naw, I think the GC has the right balance it needs in view of the fact that the ZC is a very unconventional army specializing in guerrilla tactics and corruption.

Petro did alot of thinking about this I'm sure and I like what they came up with as it mimmicks some of the RL problems with dealing with ppl willing to do anything to serve their cause.

I'm sure my opinion is not widely helded based on the boards

Uhm, again, could you be a little more specific?
The black market problem wouldn't be very hard to solve, you could e.g. say that IG88 and Bossk can buy technology or leve Urai Fen as a cloaked unit or even make the heroes cloaked only if you drag them on a "buy technology" spot.
Do you really think it's balanced if a ZC player can attack virtually any planet with 5 heroes and an orbital bombardemnt without warning?
Just imagine Darth Vader would be a cloaked unit.
Now imagine Vader, the emperor,Veers and Piett were cloaked as well. Balanced?
And even if you say that Empire and ZC heroes aren't comparable (although I am then wondering what disadvantage of the ZC makes up for the great advantage of having cloaked heroes only), the fact remains that a ZC player would be able to take about any planet but the most heavily defended ones without warning, space battles or the possibility to defend oneself against that.

OK, I jsut tried it out and it's really quite like I thought:
I just started the scenario "orign of corruption" as a ZC player. You start on Hypori. I immediately took Mandalore, Ryloth, Bothawui, Kashyyk, Kuat, Honoghr and Nal Hutta (all of which were occupdied by another faction) within the first 2 minutes and without taking any losses using the following genius strategy:
-Put Silri, Urai Fen and Bossk in one fleet
-Move the fleet above a planet
-initialise a ground battle and press "auto-resolve"
-win

You are free to try the same strategy (although perhaps I should claim it for myself due to its ingenuity, dunno....)

Maybe I am confused? We know the rebels have raid where they can bring any force into your planet, no warning. What is to prevent a person from camping rebel heroes over a planet and bringing them in once the raid starts?

My general view on the balance issue is Petro spent alot of time figuring this thing out. I am more likely to feel their take on balance is better than ppl that have been playing as Imps or Rebs for years and are indeed bias.

There seems to be a call to have the ZC be the weakest little sisters of the poor and be last in terms of power. I just don't agree with that and apparently neither did Petro.

Finally, the one thing I realize is that it is almost impossible for a RTS to have "perfect" balance in terms of single player vs multiplayer. There are just some things you cannot predict that humans will do, because humans will do "ANYTHING" to win.

I will say the balance for playing single player vs the AI is great. I am old school, from the days "before" multiplayer and still prefer that brand of play over playing the I'll do "ANYTHING" to win humans. I understand that is a minority view, but that's me and maybe that why I'm having so much fun.

In the end, maybe the answer is different rules and setup for multiplay, because that is where any inbalance becomes a problem due to the way humans exploit things to win IMHO.

Good work YertyL keep the analysis coming. Khasei I am not advocating making ZC the weakest faction. I dont mind them having some of the best gear but it has to come at a price. I think each factions should have its specialities, say for example, Rebels get the best fighters, Imps get the best cap ships and ZC get the best special weapons and abilities; but other factions should not get totally crapped on in areas where they are not strongest... The ZC should have alot fewer ships and a player must really use their brains to use them to their full effectiveness and when they do they are more than a match for the Rebs or Imps. That would be cool. ZC should be high cost and in the minority but have elite stuff. Thats what they were meant to be but it doesnt play like that.

Im sure Petro are grateful for your faith but this game has always had balance issues and they just cant seem to nail it. To put it simply, I would not be using the playtesters they used on any project if I were a dev. They must be yes men with no balls to play the game and say "erm sorry but this isnt quite right" or they are dummies because after a mere few days of playing hordes of us players can see this just doesnt work.

I also play against AI much more than I play multiplayer unfortunately, and even worse I cannot get online due to a variety of reasons. This is the most important part of any game but its really fallen down. I agree that when you have a human factor they are always going to looking for the exploits or power-plays but thats humans. All games should be made to be balanced against AI because that is how most games are played and what gives them their longevity. Sure multi-play is important these days and helps to extend the life of a game, but after a games popularity has fallen, people that really enjoy playing will generally come back to it as a single player. Games that dont seem to fade are simply classics, like Starcraft for eg. If peple want to power play in single play, they cheat themselves out of some fun; if they do it against another human, they will get the same in return.

This will never be as balanced as Starcraft or any other game that does not offer a singleplayer GC campaign that includes land and space, SP GC story campaigns land and space, land skirmish and space skirmish for single and multiplay, period. These are the times I miss the good ole days of singleplayer only games

Its almost a bad comparison as EAW is a different kind of RTS than those.

I see this as several games wrapped into one:

1.Singleplayer GC with land and space: This is where the game shines, the cost for the ZC is 3-4 times that of the rebs and imps and the power of the ships balances out, because you just cannot buy as much as the imps or rebs until you grow.

2.Singleplayer Skirmish land: Things generally balance out as its a rock,paper, scissors battle with the three sides. I love the way things play out here.

3.Singleplayer Skirmish space: Things get out of balance as the cost are equal which leads to the ZC having more power than they would in GC by FAR! The BM items are a big advantage early, but the ZC AI can still be defeated.

4.Multiplayer Skirmish Land: The land RPS balance seems to be ok but that is a guess as I don't play multi and most ppl have only talked about multi space. No solid experience.

5.Multiplayer Skirmish Space: This is where the BM items and the eqaul cost of the space ships really shows the problem with doing all of these types of gameplay based on "1" set of rules.

Frankly, it is SO friggin easy to change the cost of the ZC ships for multiplay space "only" I started to release the underworld space ship xml's with the new cost based on what the community decided was a good number. I decided against it because it does not seem that ppl can come up with a consensus, which is not a surprise at all.

In reality Petro did not put out the game I play on my computer as is, since I "ALWAYS" mod my computer games. Nothing "ANY" developer has put out and I play on computer in the past 18 years has not been modded to "my" perferences. I "never" look for the developer to decide what should be in my gameplay experience. A road map/blueprint sure, but once its in my hands I mod it to the game "I" want it to be.

My opinions are based on my experience with the game, it has "NOTHING" to do with Petro faith or anything like that at all.

I do thank Petro for the XML route as Hex editing still sucks after 18 years of doing it LOL!

I agree. Good post. Without XMLs and the ease of editing EaW would lose a hellavu lost of appeal. I agree that it is only in space skirmish where the game really takes a hit. I think they got the land side of it right. An easy way to get a fairly accurate value of any unit is to basically create a formula and assign values to various characteristics like HPs, damage, range etc. The hardest thing is coming up with a formula and assigning values to special abilities, however once this is done ALL crafts values are derived from this and their cost will reflect their ability so there can be no imbalance. I did this in a XWing Alliance mod I did for EaW and it proved VERY balanced.

Maybe I am confused? We know the rebels have raid where they can bring any force into your planet, no warning. What is to prevent a person from camping rebel heroes over a planet and bringing them in once the raid starts?

There are a few slight differences between rebel and ZC raids:

1. The rebels can not bring "any Force" into your planet but are limited to 2 units + 1 hero (+ Han,Chewie and/or C3PO&R2D2, however I find that unblanced as well); the ZC can bring up to 5 heroes and an unlimited amount of defilers (and an orbital bombardement) down without winning space.
2. The rebels can attack any frontline planet and from any planet that is not blockaded by an enemy fleet.
The ZC can attack absolutely any planet from absolutely any planet (even the blockaded ones, since their heroes are all cloaked).
While against a reb player you are safe if you have your 2-4 frontline planets guarded heavily enough to be able to repel a relatively small attack and can block further advancement of enemy heroes by blockading the planet in space, against a ZC player you have to protect all of your planets heavily enough to be able to repel 5 heroes, and after taking your first planet, the ZC player can instantly move on to the next one.

Concerning a second quote...

Quote:

1.Singleplayer GC with land and space: This is where the game shines, the cost for the ZC is 3-4 times that of the rebs and imps and the power of the ships balances out, because you just cannot buy as much as the imps or rebs until you grow.

I'd say that that is true for ZC ground units who can normally dish out far more than the rebel an imp ones (generally speaking), but are also far more costly (especially infantry and turrets, but mostly ZC ground units cost about twice as much or more than their rebel and imp "counterparts").
In space however, ZC units cost exactly as much as their counterparts (e.g. starviper) or slightly more, while being far more effective than the corresponding rebel or imp unit. This is where balance ends...

Maybe you didn't read and understand my post. In "singleplayer" GC a TB4 is 600 credits to the Canderous at 2400, 1800 if you own Mandalore, it is like that across the the board including space if not more. Check out the Plex troops at 75 credits and the Underworld Mercs at 325 and 450 credits, do the math.

im curious why the hell u ppl think some units gotta cost more?
im already searchin for a mod to make most of the ships cheaper or getting more money at the beginning of a GC match, cause im pissed to run around with so few units at the beginning. cause im not that type of a player that raids anything at the beginning just for a quickwin. cause thats just plain stupid and ruins the fun of it IMO. maybe its effective, but i wouldnt do it, cause i like entertaining matches and theres nothing entertaining in such a rushing tactic.
but thats what happens to nearly every RTS games, cause some ppl cant live without "winning every time" and start cryin when they got hit pretty bad or leaving the game cause of that.

Maybe you didn't read and understand my post. In "singleplayer" GC a TB4 is 600 credits to the Canderous at 2400, 1800 if you own Mandalore, it is like that across the the board including space if not more. Check out the Plex troops at 75 credits and the Underworld Mercs at 325 and 450 credits, do the math.

I'd say that that is true for ZC ground units who can normally dish out far more than the rebel an imp ones (generally speaking), but are also far more costly (especially infantry and turrets, but mostly ZC ground units cost about twice as much or more than their rebel and imp "counterparts").In space however, ZC units cost exactly as much as their counterparts (e.g. starviper) or slightly more, while being far more effective than the corresponding rebel or imp unit. This is where balance ends...

They have already said the viper would be toned down a bit. It comes without the BM items in GC which cost a few thousand. The X-Wing is unlocked so maybe that is where they felt things evened out, they didn't so they will fix that.

The Y-Wing is 210 the Tie Bomber 150 the Skipray 500 plus several thouand to unlock sensor jammer on the BM, hmm same cost, oh ok, you win.

Yes but what about the never not cheatin ai it doesnt matter if it costs 500 if the ai can cheat for credits.

That's rich . I would not doubt that there is some AI assist, most likely in the form of lua files in GC. Although I would be interested in the file ppl think gives extra credits cause it sure is not the starbases. However, there may be a credit multiplyer for hard level that supports the theory of what some call the instant credit cheating AI LOL!

Glad I always edit/mod my computer games, because I "NEVER" lock in perfectly to the designers view of how a game should play. Thanks Petro for the XML's!

They have already said the viper would be toned down a bit. It comes without the BM items in GC which cost a few thousand. The X-Wing is unlocked so maybe that is where they felt things evened out, they didn't so they will fix that.

The Y-Wing is 210 the Tie Bomber 150 the Skipray 500 plus several thouand to unlock sensor jammer on the BM, hmm same cost, oh ok, you win.

Guess what? Teching up costs "thousands" for Imps and Rebs as well!
And congrats on picking the one space unit that costs significantly more than their counterpart. Now could you please compare the prices in general instead of focusing on one not very representative example?

Best way to solve this is to give us options to disable 1 or 2 factions before a game. I predict we'd see a lot of reb/empire only games online, and I just might start playing it online again!

There's nothing about the ZC that isn't overpowered. Their units are expensive which helps to balance GC a little, but in skirmish battles (which is all I ever play online, mostly space skirmish, because I don't want to sit through a GC) ZC is overpowered to the extreme. Give us an option to disable them and all will be well.